One Day I Decided to Fight
My aunt sparked my fire
NEW YORK CITYVOICES: Summer 2006
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By Mary Ann Johnston Maybe this article about my struggle with paranoid schizophrenia will help someone. I certainly hope so. It is not a lost cause. There is hope. I have demonstrated to myself and others that the battle can be at least partially won.
You have to help yourself. You can�t sit around waiting for someone to do it for you. It was after 13 years of suffering with schizophrenia that I finally came to realize the fact that I had a mental illness and was not possessed by demons.
One day, soon after my father died of a heart attack, my aunt said to me, �Snap out of it. You cannot do this to your mother.� It was then that I realized that my mother had suffered enough and I decided to fight back. These words had hit home and for some reason opened my eyes.
For 13 years I had seen things, heard things and felt things that terrified me. Now, with the help of God and remembering my aunt�s words, I began to slowly come out of that hell. I realized there was nothing there and I didn�t have to be afraid. I started to take my medicine the way I should. It is now 17 years since this all happened. I still feel as if I�m detangling or unwinding from something.
However, my main enemy has become my memory, especially of the time when I lived on the street and had knives put to my throat and was sexually abused.
I still have the schizophrenia and still see, hear and feel things and the pain is really bad at times, but I�m still better and there are a lot of people I am grateful to: my family, the doctors, the therapist, and most of all, my aunt.
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